Guide Talk:XEdit

Discussion

Howdy guys. I have a few things I want to discuss before changing so we don't have to go through edit wars or anything like that. Please share your thoughts on these items, be sure to sign your comments with ~~~~. Mator (talk) 13:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

Byline

The xEdit guide -- by Kesta and the S.T.E.P. Team

It's not right to have a byline on a wiki article. A wiki page is a page that can be edited by anyone. It doesn't make sense to attribute it to any group or person. I wasn't able to find an explicit policy on this on wikipedia but I can assure you that this is never done and conflicts with everything that a wiki stands for. Can we please reconsider having this here and remove it? Mator (talk) 13:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

Hahaha! Wikipedia... From what I've seen and experienced, wiki "standards" are made up of whoever hosts and creates the content. This is standard for our wiki to give credit or to announce that it's considered 'official' content. It should be edited, though. By the way, STEP uses MediaWiki. TechAngel85 (talk) 23:01, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

I only mentioned wikipedia because you guys link it for your editing help page (default mediawiki behavior) and it is a generally well-known and accepted wiki (it kind of set the standard). I'm well aware that you're using MediaWiki, I have a fairly good understanding of wiki frameworks so I know my way around. While it's true that whoever hosts the wiki can establish whatever "standards" they want, I still think it should be noted that attributing articles to users or groups directly deviates from the philosophy of most wikis (at least, every wiki I've ever been to, asides from one fan fiction wiki... which is a different use case, and was a mess by the way).

My issue is that what if a user who has an article attributed to them stops being around? Other users may not consider editing the article because it has someone else's name on it. It also brings up the possibility of conflict because you're giving special treatment to a particular user/group. If a user were to make major contributions to this article it is not guaranteed that their name would go up there too, so you devalue and thus discourage them from contributing. Furthermore, by providing special rewards for "big contributions" you discourage "small contributions", which are just as important for making and keeping a wiki pristine and accurate. I'm not telling you to do anything, I'm merely questioning the motivation behind a practice in the hopes that it can be improved, if any improvement is deemed necessary. Mator (talk) 00:48, August 7, 2015 (EDT)

I'm with Mator on this one, not only "by Kesta and the STEP Team" is untrue, as Mator is about to contribute and a lot of other people, non-STEP Team member, helped by providing informations on various forums (zilav is just the most obvious example...). I understand the concept of "rewarding contributors" to stimulate contributions in general, but for this specific guide this is unnecessary and might prevent some "small contributors" to add their own input, as explained above. Kesta (talk) 23:23, August 3, 2015 (EDT)

Capitalization in headers

In my past wiki experience I often tried capitalizing too many words in headers, and I have noticed this practice is also present in this article. E.g. this header would be === Capitalization in Headers === instead of what it is now. A friend of mine helped me break this habit. A header isn't a title -- only the first word should be capitalized unless the word would normally be capitalized in a sentence. Mator (talk) 13:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

Forum threads

Is it standard to link forum threads from a STEP wiki page? I'd say that both of those should be on the talk page or put into a "useful links" section on the article. They shouldn't be arbitrarily at the top of the article. Mator (talk) 13:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

Again, standard here on STEP. Every Guide links back to it's forum thread for discussion. In all honesty, the talk pages are rarely used because the forum is more convenient and reaches more users. TechAngel85 (talk) 23:11, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

I noticed the talk pages are rarely used. You're not the first wiki to rarely use talk pages. Somehow most people don't really use them much. I have no idea why, though. Perhaps they're too far out of the way for most users to even realize they're there? I'll be using them a bit just because I like using them (I'm weird, I know), but I'll also try to use the forum threads (as I did in this case). Would it not make sense to move those forum threads to some kind of section in the article, or to use some kind of template to hold them and be all pretty? If they're going to be present for every article they should be standardized, organized, and encapsulated. Mator (talk) 00:58, August 7, 2015 (EDT)

Breaking things up

Do we really want this all to be on one page? It seems to me that this page is extremely large already and will only be getting larger as we add more content. I know I'm questioning a fundamental aspect of how this wiki operates, so this should really be escalated to the proper location for discussion. It's just been my experience that it's easier for users to digest content if it is broken into multiple articles. Yes a linked table of contents is nice, but I could easily see this content broken up into multiple articles. E.g.

Guide:XEdit - A general overview of what xEdit is, how it has been used by the community, who has been developing it, history of development and use, etc. This article wouldn't have any how-to/guide components.
Guide: xEdit Setup - A guide for downloading, installing, and setting up xEdit.
Guide: Basic xEdit Usage - A guide pertaining to basic usage of xEdit. This would cover what different parts of the interface do and the Basic Functionalities section.
Guide: Advanced xEdit Usage - A guide for advanced usage of xEdit. This would cover the advanced functionalities.
Guide: xEdit Scripting - A guide for xEdit scripting.

By breaking things up like this we will enable users to feel less overwhelmed, keep track of separate information in different articles, and allow individual sections to grow more. Mator (talk) 13:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

It can be broken up and use something similar (or the same thing) as the INI page template (reference) which uses sub-pages. TechAngel85 (talk) 23:14, August 6, 2015 (EDT)

Awesome, we should do that then once User:Kesta is on board. Mator (talk) 01:00, August 7, 2015 (EDT)